Sponsored App Review: LEO Privacy Guard – AppLock

LEO Privacy Guard is an Android app that’s designed to keep whichever apps, or content like your SMS messages, you want safe from the prying eyes of others. Whether or not this is a roommate you share with, a paranoid partner or just kids you want to keep on the games, LEO Privacy Guard will do it all and more. You can either lock apps beyond a PIN or a passcode and users won’t notice anything different until they actually go ahead and try to launch one of these apps, giving you the peace of mind you’re after. With different modes for home or whatever, and the ability to create your own, LEO Privacy Guard has a lot on offer. More than just a way to lock apps, there are fun covers for the app lock itself as well as a speed boost to keep your phone running smoothly as well. Take a look at our video review here:

To get started locking down your apps, you’ll need to download LEO Privacy Guard from the Play Store. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be introduced to what the app has to offer.

You’ll then be asked to input either a pattern or a passcode, which you’ll need to remember, as this is what will unlock your apps.

Once you’ve done that – including setting a question to remind yourself – you’ll be sent to the main menu.

Here, you can see that I don’t have any apps or anything else locked, and on the next page, the Protection menu will tell me that my privacy isn’t protected much at all.

So, I need to go ahead and lock some apps down first, to make sure that people can’t go heading into my Gmail or download expensive apps from the Play Store. You can simply select apps for each mode, like the default Guest Mode, great for handing your phone over to friends or the kids.

My apps are now locked, but I wanted to try out the funny cover, something that might be good fun if you have friends and family trying to get into your device. You can choose from a handful of different funny lock screens for the apps hat you’ve chosen to be locked.

I opted for the beauty cover which, as it turns out isn’t what you think it is. Once your device goes to sleep, your apps that have been chosen to be locked will be locked once you unlock your phone again. Here I am at my launcher:

Let’s say I wanted to open up the Play Store at the top there, well, I can’t because this is one of my locked apps:

You’ll notice a pop-up message that asks the user to pull faster or slower here, this is because the zip is just a trick, you have to open it in a different way – which is shown only to the phone owner – in order to get things open. When you do get the app open, you’ll be asked to input your code or pattern.

So, I have the apps I want locked down, but there’s more to LEO Privacy Guard, like the ability to get suggestions on how to better protect your privacy.

LEO Privacy Guard can help you hide away and lock content that isn’t just apps or games, like your images and even offer up a private SMS feature.

LEO Privacy Guard is an app that can help to keep everything of yours nice and safe from prying eyes. This isn’t about having anything to hide, but more about being able to make sure the kids don’t end up sending emails to folks at the office, purchase pricey games or to make sure your partner doesn’t snoop and ruin a potential surprise or something much worse. That’s only one part of the equation here, and while that’s a big part of it, there’s more to it. LEO Privacy Guard can also be used to keep your text messages and images away from prying eyes as well. The app manager side of things is handy, but it seems a little disjointed here, after all this is not what most people would be downloading LEO for. Instead, people will be happy to see the fun lock themes and the overall attention to detail, too.

Ratings

Speed (4/5) – Not only does LEO itself run quickly, but the app lock had no effect on the overall performance of my device, at all.

Theme (4/5) – A good-looking app, LEO has a number of nice themes that you an install and the fun locker themes help lighten things up a little bit as well.

Features (5/5) – No doubt about it, LEO Privacy Guard has everything you could want here, all cramped in to one easy-to-use app.

Fun app lock covers can make things fun or innocent to those trying to use your device.

Features options to lock away SMS messages and images as well as just lock apps.

Cons

App manager is a nice feature, but it seems like an add-on that doesn’t have much to do with locking things away.

Clear instructions on how apps become locked would be nice for new users.

All-in-all, LEO Privacy Guard is a decent app, and it’s one that has a lot on offer. For those that need to keep certain apps away from the kids, or their partner, LEO Privacy Guard does its job. It’s not exactly subtle in how it does it, but for the user locking things it’s fairly easy to setup at least. To be clear, LEO Privacy Guard is just about locking your own content away, rather than protecting you from outside threats from the Internet, but if that’s what you’re looking for, then this will surely get the job done.